Tag: wildlife

Wildlife in Your Backyard

 

Attracting Wildlife to Your Backyard: 101 Ways to Make Your Property Home for Creatures Great and Small by Josh VanBrakle

It is raining.

My office is three-quarters windows so I am surrounded by nature. Trees and bushes are my landscape.

I see my three squirrel-proof Sky Café bird feeders right over the top of my computer, their roofs dripping the rain away from the seeds, and, yes, some birds are happily eating those very seeds. Don’t let anyone tell you that birds won’t eat in wet weather. I eat in wet weather; you eat in wet weather; birds eat in wet weather.

Which brings me to Attracting Wildlife to Your Backyard: 101 Ways to Make Your Property Home for Creatures Great and Small by Josh VanBrakle.

I have wildlife coming and going throughout my property: possums, raccoons, mice, lizards, those damn voles and their holes; in addition to countless squirrels of the grey, black, and rust variety (my wife the Beautiful AP and I once saw a white one). Sometimes we see rabbits too. And birds, species after species of beautiful birds at our feeders, in our bushes and on our trees.

I also have those horrible outdoor cats, some feral, some let out by their owners. Those cats are responsible for the death of over a billion (yes over a billion!) birds a year. I like cats…indoors.

Now, the author Josh VanBrakle is a research forester and he lays out most of what a person needs to know to attract and keep wildlife on private property; from planting native plants; getting rid of invasive species, choosing which trees to plant, where to plant them; how to create and care for a rather large pond of at least half an acre or more.

He even recommends attracting bats to your property to kill off mosquitoes. And bring in the bees in order to pollinate recommended plants (bats help pollinate plants too).

Do I think this is a good book and worthy of a read? Yes, I do, especially if you have the land necessary to put in place his recommendations. Still many of his insights actually do fit those of us whose properties do not live up to the proper size required for a half-acre or more pond. For example, if invasive species of plants have possessed your property, he gives you a step-by-step method for exorcising such demons.

In truth, I do not want to attract deer or moose or bears or bobcats or mountain lions to my property; just birds. I particularly do not want to attract those aggressive, vicious cats.

Wild nature is not so wild as it once was. One of the greatest saviors of our wildlife is, in truth, us. So welcome the wild ones into your civilized life.

Visit Frank’s web site at www.frankscoblete.com. His books are available at Amazon.com, Barnes and Noble, Kindle and at bookstores.

 

 

 

Jamaica Bay Wildlife Refuge

 

The South Shore Audubon Society has Sunday birding walks at various locations on Long Island and Queens.

One of my favorite places is The Jamaica Bay Wildlife Refuge at 175-10 Cross Bay Blvd, Broad Channel, NY 11693.

This place is beautiful. There are woods in some areas and a 1.5 mile path around a lake and next to the Bay – lake on one side of the path; bay on the other. It is spectacular walking that path.

Off in the distance you can see the wonderful skyline of Manhattan; on the other side in the distance are the beach-front buildings of Long Beach. It is nature and civilization juxtaposed.

Even if you are not a birder, the walk alone is excellent. You will, of course, see many different types of birds flitting about from branch to branch and the great predators soaring into the skies. The “soarers” are usually hawks and falcons, the rulers of the air. Little birds fly in the air; the predators (known as raptors) own the air.

Last Sunday we saw a beautiful peregrine falcon sitting in a tree, near her nest. This falcon can fly up to (hold your breath) 200 miles-per-hour as it makes its descent to kill its prey. I saw this once at Jones Beach. It was dazzling, jaw dropping. Think of driving 65 miles-per-hour and having this bird pass you as if you are parked.

The park is easy to find. Just take exit 17S off the Belt Parkway and go about two miles. The park will be on your right. Here is the website of the New York Audubon Society: http://www.nycaudubon.org/queens-birding/jamaica-bay-wildlife-refuge.

Frank’s latest books are Confessions of a Wayward Catholic; I Am a Dice Controller: Inside the World of Advantage-Play Craps, and I Am a Card Counter: Inside the World of Advantage-Play Blackjack. Available from Amazon.com, Kindle, Barnes and Noble, and at bookstores.